i'm faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast so faaaaaaaaast you can barely see me in speeeeeeeed fiouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu The screen-meal deal Anyways, about the screen-meal deal. When I turned eighteen, I left the family household (or what was left of it) and took this ritual along with me. What used to feel like a celebration, became a habit with no taste (most of the time). So here I am, in my twenties, coming back home in the evening, getting myself some food. I sit at my desk or on my couch, turn my laptop on and scroll through the world-wide-web restlessly until a video, a movie (or anything else that is animated really), grabs my attention. When a spark finally happen: I start to eat. “Hmhm hmm hmm hm hmhm hmhmhmh!”, I’m twelve and I just came back to the 110 Avenue de Paris, from school for the lunch break. I run up the stairs, open the front door and here I am: alone at home! I fall on the ugly, yet comfy, white Ikea couch in the living-room after warming up some rice and a cordon bleu. In front of me, this beautiful wooden table we got from some great-great-uncle, and on its broken mosaic top: my dad’s iPad… open on YouTube! My finger reaches for the screen, presses the ▶ button and starts to play a random grainy episode of the Simpsons. I’m in for a treat! (1.) Around 2001, my mother decided to get the family rid of our cube-shaped tv (which honestly was already long overdue… once you start hitting the screen for the picture to stop strolling waves of pixels strings, you know something ain’t right) and she wasn’t gonna look back… our family was gonna be “screen-free”! Don’t get me wrong we never ate in front of the tv when it was there. At least, not when mum was around… So, only once in a while, the forbidden fruit would be dinner’s side-dish. And how spicy would these meals be. Whatever was in the plates didn’t matter, as long as it could be enjoyed in front of a blasting screen, opening its arms to the meal evasion. I never thought much about what it meant to be eating in front of a screen, something like an unconscious meal, focused on an outside narrative, in opposition to the food plot in my plate… Nowadays, the daily screen-meal deal is for me an exhausted pleasure, who spoils the celebration out of a moment with one-self accompanied by a good meal and a good movie, video, tv-show (or anything else that is animated really). Automated leisure time as anything on the screen would do, and nothing can do when the mood doesn’t strike. It’s like eating too much of the same treats: one gets fed up. Yet one persists to keep the ritual intact: something must be playing on the screen! So many movies or tv-shows I’ve listened to, probably imagined from their dialogues, but most of the time I wasn’t paying attention to the screen, it was just there, as companionship. Like sudokus. Yes, I turned moving-images into sudokus, you might be invested in it for a short amount of time, and truly enjoy it once in a while, but really most of the time when you do them, you are only passing time. Any sudoku would do for you will forget them as fast as you did them. I do sudokus when I ‘watch’ those animated shows. Lots of sudokus. Instead of having dessert. Sugar treats, not really my thing. (2.)
